Modification of the Backlash Avoidance Model
STATUS AS A BUFFER TO THE CONSEQUENCES OF BACKLASH FEAR: MODIFICATION OF THE BACKLASH AVOIDANCE MODEL By SARA K. MANUEL A dissertation submitted to the Graduate School-New Brunswick Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey In partial fulfillment of the requirements For the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in Psychology Written under the direction of Laurie A. Rudman And approved by _____________________________________ _____________________________________ _____________________________________ _____________________________________ New Brunswick, New Jersey October 2016 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Status as a buffer to the consequences of backlash fear: Modification of the backlash avoidance model by SARA K. MANUEL Dissertation Director: Laurie A. Rudman Despite advances toward equality, stereotypes still restrict the roles of individuals within society. Violation of these stereotypes results in backlash, in the form of social and financial penalties (Rudman, 1998), serving to discourage vanguards. Women specifically risk backlash for demonstrating agency, and in an effort to avoid this backlash, may mitigate their agentic expressions, compromising performance (Rudman, Moss-Racusin, Glick, & Phelan, 2012). The Backlash Avoidance Model (BAM; Moss- Racusin & Rudman, 2010) identifies low perceived entitlement as the mechanism through which backlash fear influences performance. Yet, with the rise of many prominent women in traditionally atypical domains, how do some women effectively express agency and attain success? I hypothesized that status—a perceived performance advantage (Fişek, Berger, & Norman, 2005)—protects women’s perceived entitlement, resulting in optimal performance on tasks requiring agency. This dissertation introduced the Modified-BAM (M-BAM), which incorporates the role of status in women’s backlash ii avoidance strategies to account for initial differences in perceived entitlement that allow some women to perform agentic tasks without disruption from fear of backlash.
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